User:Matthewfarenheit/Sandbox/Civility
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Civility is a code of conduct when editing on the wiki. We define incivility roughly as personally targeted behaviour that causes an atmosphere of greater conflict and stress. Our code of civility states plainly that people must act with civility toward one another. Users must understand that we don't ask them to love, honor, obey, or even respect one another, but we have the right to demand Civility.
Problem
We permanently invite users to participate on community pages and improve the wiki, but having an already installed user base with the most varied POVs, there's always the risk that someone won't be glad with another person's edits. There's a lot of processes and templates that have to be followed, policies that have to be respected and precedent that makes the history of the wiki, so the probabilities of committing a mistake or repeating something already proposed are very likely. Also, this is the wiki of a web based game so it's almost certain that you'll find users that happen to be on rival groups/class/etc. Finally, the Internet is a big place and you may not be from an English speaking country, or just don't care about using proper grammar. This all will just add to the flames, and so users may then start criticizing someone (or his work) in an unwarranted, very harsh way.
Silent and faceless words on talk, community pages or even edit summaries do not transmit the nuances of verbal conversation, leading to small, facetious comments being misinterpreted. One uncivil remark can easily escalate into a heated discussion which may not focus objectively on the problem at hand. It is during these exchanges that community members may become uninterested in improving the wiki and instead focus on "triumphing" over the "enemy".
Examples
These are a number of examples that heavily contribute to an uncivil environment:
- Taunting
- Accusations of most kinds
- Personal attacks
- Racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious slurs
- Attacking a user's work (suggestion, group page, policy, community resource, report, etc) in an excessively agressive manner
- Profanity directed at another user
- Harassing
- Bandwagoning (calling your friends to aid you) against another user
- Defacing an user's pages
- Indecent suggestions directed to another user
Incivility happens, for example, when you create a new suggestion and, as voting starts, another users votes Spam - If you're making a suggestion as moronic as this at least include some zombie flying skills.. Escalation occurs when you ask him whether his suggestions ever made it to the game or not. Note that none of those comments were focused on improving the suggestion at all.
This style of interaction between users drives away contributors, distracts others from more important matters, and weakens the entire community.
How should I respond to incivility?
When addressing incivility, we recommend:
- Talking things out: There's always the possibility that the user didn't intend to be uncivil about things or that you were oversensitive when being criticized, so the first step is always talking things through. This brings up another point:
- Mind where you are: The best place to respond to uncivil users is their talk page. Big chains of replies in administrative or community pages always end up making both ends of the problem look bad to the rest of the community. Also, they tend to attract the attention of users that will just hop in the conversation for their own amusement.
- Ignoring the user: An user may have personal reasons to be uncivil, ignore and/or refute your attempts to restore peace to the conversation. When you think this is the case, it may be in your best interest to avoid any contact with the user in question.
- Requesting a third party mediation: If all else fails, take things to Arbitration.
In change, we don't recommend:
- Escalating the conflict: Don't respond to incivility. Either ignore incivility when replying or refrain from replying at all, as an escalation won't be good for anyone of you.
- Censor the other parties comments or deleting them whole: While it may appear to you that it's in the best interest for the community to remove uncivil comments or parts of them, striking them out or some other form of censorship, this considered very poor form and, in some instances, can lead Sysops to believe that you committed vandalism.
- Trying to vandalize the other party: While it may appear to you that someone's edits are extremely bad faith when directed to you, the very same may not be true for the rest of the community or, in the very least, the ruling sysop. Reporting undesired edits on A/VB is very poor form and will just feed the drama, more so if they do not conform a plain form of vandalism themselves.
- Trying to "win" in any way: Remember that your objective should be for your work to be given the respect it deserves and your edits be taken seriously as you formulated them. There's no point in "winning" a discussion in any way, and just makes you "win" enemies that may retaliate at any point of your wiki stay.
Keep in mind that if you always make your edits in good faith and keep criticism constructive, then it would be very less likely that you'll attract or cause incivility. Failure to be civil with fellow editors is a negative contribution to the wiki community.
How will we respond to incivility?
Although a level of harshness is understandable when criticizing someone or his work, sometimes the level of incivility is such that there's a valid risk of losing users because of it. While we encourage intelligent criticism and free speech, there's no reason to be uncivil when expressing yourself. The reasons someone may have to be uncivil escape the scope of this policy, but none of them justify incivility in any manner.
While there's a parallelism between incivility and vandalism (roughly defined as bad faith edits), sysops try not to vandalize incivility and punish it as such on the grounds that such a ruling would be very subjective, more so in petty cases were the hostilities have just begun, thus they will direct most cases to Arbitration: for that reason, uncivil users thrive in the wiki. This parallelism of vandalism/incivility ends when the final result is that the uncivil users usually remains unpunished and the harassed users leaves. So, in resume, one must remember that while vandalism is reversible, driving away an user and potential contributor (being the worst result that incivility may bring) has no turn back in most cases.
Arbitration
As said above, Arbitration is the last resource to resort in case that talking things out and ignoring the user don't seem to work. Try to take Arbitration as objectly as you can, and if possible inform the other party that you will be starting an Arbitration case with antelation: sometimes the sole mention of it makes users back off their words and/or think twice about the costs. Avoid escalating the conflict by being harsh yourself and try to agree on an Arbitrator that is as neutral and unrelated to both parties as possible. When a ruling is made, make all the questions you feel like doing about it and follow it by the letter.
The Arbitrator
Whe you start an Arbitration request, there's often people that volunteer to be Arbitrators. In addition, both parties usually nominate in advance who would they be accepting as Arbitrators themselves. Do not nominate only your friends, and keep in mind who are the other party's friends as well. Remember that once the Arbitrator is choosen Arbitration comences and there's no turn back. Also, remember that if you do not agree on an Arbitrator with the other party a Sysop may take the case or choose an Arbitrator for it, so try to reach an agreement as the whole case usually depends on wich Arbitrator is finally choosen. This is the same if the accused party chooses to ignore or mock the case.
The Arbitration process
It consists of:
- An opening statement by the Arbitrator where he usually points out that he has been choosen as an Arbitrator and how will he carry the case.
- A section were the reporting party presents his/hers/their case with all the evidence (in the form of links) the party can provide.
- Another section were the accused party has the opportunity to present his own statement with all the evidence and arguments he/she/they can provide against the reporter's case.
- A third section where the reporting party has the opportunity to rebut what the accused user/party has said against his case.
- A fourth and final section where the accused party has the opportunity to rebut what the reporting party has said up to now.
While the process of Arbitration is being carried on, it's forbidden to users not included in any of the parties to make statements. To be uncivil in the Arbitration process itself is grounds for a harsher ruling and can be used as evidence in the case, but it's adviced not to be oversensitive while the case is in process. Also, if the accused user/party is deemed to ignore or mock the case, just a section for the reporting party where the case is presented would be enough to make the ruling.
The ruling
The final part of the Arbitration process is the ruling. It consists of a closing statement by the Arbitrator where he states his view about the case and what would the punishments and limitations to both parties be. For reasons of security, Arbitrators are not allowed to punish users with more than an escalation of the warning/bannings statuses of the users involved in the case, or an escalation of the bans ignoring the ammount of warnings. In terms of limitations, however, they may bar users from all the pages he/she believes they shouldn't participate for whatever ammount of time he/she believe is needed, and bar them of personally refer or contact each other for any ammount of time as well. In any way, the final ruling should be endorsed by a Sysop that will review the punishments and limitations not to be exaggerated (an Arbitrator barring an user to participate on any administrational and community page on the wiki forever would be unwarranted).
Voting section
| Voting Rules |
Votes must be numbered, signed, and timestamped. They can take one of two forms:
Votes that do not conform to the above will be struck by a sysop. |
| The only valid voting sections are For and Against. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote. |
For
The policy is not under voting yet, discussion on the talk page
Against
The policy is not under voting yet, discussion on the talk page
